Semi-Whole Wheat Loaf Bread

Hooray! We found a loaf bread recipe that we really like. The last one we tried used almost all whole wheat, plus we overbaked it, so it ended up too dry and crumbly. This one was nice and moist, soft, still crumbly and rustic but also more chewy and elastic like the professional kind. We made the crust soft by wrapping it after baking, but it would be good with a hard crust as well.

This bread is also amazing because it restored my love of Nutella. For some reason this summer I couldn't enjoy it - I tried making desserts with it and eating it on flimsy grocery store bread, and it just tasted too sweet and unappealing. When I had some on this bread, however, it reminded me of the thick German-style rolls I must have had Nutella on at some point, and it was awesome.


Semi-Whole Wheat Loaf Bread
Adapted from allrecipes.com

3 cups warm water
2 (.25 oz) packages active dry yeast
1/3 cup honey
5 cups bread flour
3 tablespoons butter, melted
1/3 brown sugar
1 tablespoon salt
4 cups whole wheat flour
2 tablespoons butter, melted

In a large bowl, mix warm water, yeast, and 1/3 cup honey. Add 5 cups white bread flour, and stir to combine. Let sit for 30 minutes.

Mix in the 3 tablespoons melted butter, 1/3 cup brown sugar, and salt. Mix in 2 cups of the whole wheat flour (I suggest with your hands - a spoon with not cut it at this point). Flour a flat surface and start adding more whole wheat flour while kneading. You should knead about 10 minutes, until the dough is very elastic and not sticking to your surface, but still wet enough to stick to your hands a little. This will probably take about 2 additional cups of the flour. Place in a greased bowl, turning once to coat the surface of the dough. Cover with a dishtowel and let rise in a warm place until doubled.

Punch down the dough and divide it into 2 loaves. Place in 2 greased 9 x 5 inch loaf pans, and allow to rise until dough has topped the pans by one inch.

Bake at 350 for 25 to 30 minutes; do not overbake. Cool ON A COOLING RACK (if you put it directly down on a surface, the bottom will absorb the moisture from the bread and mold quickly). If you want a soft crust, cover the bread with a towel after it has cooled for about 10 minutes and until it is fully cool.

Orange Tofu

This post is more awesome than usual for two reasons:

1. this recipe taught me how to make the thick, syrupy sauces you get in Chinese fastfood restaurants, and, amazingly, the answer is not tons and tons of oil, and

2. the food arrangement in the photos came to me in a dream and then forgotten, and was only remembered the next day by Gabe.



"I was dreaming about arranging the orange tofu in a checkerboard pattern, with the rice in-between each square." and immediately back to sleep.

The answer, by the way, to the mystery of the thick sauce, is corn. tons of corn starch (which makes the uncooked sauce into oobleck, which is awesome) and a bit of corn syrup to make it smooth. It's actually more authentic to use tapioca starch, but we couldn't find any in the supermarket.

This recipe turned out really good. The strongly flavored sweet-and-salty, tangy sauce was nicely contrasted by the chewy, clean-tasting tofu. The only changes I would make next time are cooking the green beans less so they remain more crispy and adding less soy sauce, because it ended up dominating the flavor of the sauce so I added a lot of orange juice to compensate, which drowned out the more subtle garlic and ginger flavors. But still overall very delicious. This would be great with any assortment of veggies.

Orange Tofu with Green Beans and Water Chestnuts

1 small onion, minced
1 clove garlic, minced
10 oz water chestnuts
~30 green beans
2 cups orange juice (fresh is best, but bottled works too)
7 tablespoons tapioca or corn starch
2 tsp rice wine vinegar
1/2 cup soy sauce
brown sugar to taste
1 tbsp corn syrup
1 1/2 tbsp ketchup
1 tsp tomato paste
2/3 cup water
1 tsp minced hot green pepper
1 tsp minced ginger
1 12-oz package firm tofu
1 tbsp lime juice
pepper to taste
1 tbsp cilantro, finely chopped*
*if you're a cilantro-hater, sub in a different fresh herb - it really adds a great contrast flavor

Heat a few tablespoons oil on medium heat. Add the onion and garlic and sautee until translucent but not browned. Add the chestnuts and green beans and sautee for a minute. Add about 1/2 cup of orange juice and a bit of brown sugar, and cook for a few minutes - you will be reheating them later, so don't cook them fully yet. Remove from the heat.

Mix the starch, soy sauce, ketchup, tomato paste, vinegar, corn syrup, and water. Set aside.

Heat another tsp of oil on medium. Add the ginger and chili and cook for about 1-2 minutes until fragrant. Add the remaining orange juice and bring to a boil. Add the sauce mixture and stir constantly to prevent the starch from sticking to the bottom of the wok. Continuously stir the broth as it will thicken very quickly. Adjust the flavors, adding more orange juice, soy sauce, and brown sugar to taste. Add the lime juice, pepper, and cilantro to finish. Add more water if the sauce is too thick.

Add the veggies and keep warm, but be careful not to continue cooking the sauce (or make sure to keep stirring it if you do). Prepare the tofu by slicing it into large cubes and pressing out any excess moisture with paper towels. Heat about a 1/4" of oil in a pan on medium. Add one piece of tofu first to get the hang of frying it properly. you want it to cook slowly - if it starts to brown immediately in the pan, your heat is too high. After a minute or two, it should be a nice golden brown - at this point you should flip it and cook it another minute or two. It's not necessary to cook it on each of it's 6 sides, but I was anal about it. When the piece is done, lift it out of the pan and immediately drop it into the sauce - it should be inflated slightly and will shrink as it absorbs the sauce. Chop sticks work great for the detail work of flipping and moving tofu pieces. Once you get the hang of it, you can do a lot of pieces at once, as long as you constantly monitor them.

Your meal is ready when all of the tofu pieces have been added! You will probably end up with way too much sauce for the amount of tofu and veggies - believe me, you will want to save the extra to eat on rice after the leftover tofu is gone. Enjoy!

Lentil-Couscous Salad with Mustard Vinaigrette

Mmmmm we made this last week and thinking about it I am seriously craving it again. It sounds and looks sort of cold and palate-awakening, but it actually ended up being serious comfort food. It was really good chilled on salad with tomatoes and cucumbers, but I actually liked it more warm, with wilted spinach mixed in, over rice, with a little extra vinaigrette. It would be good as a bed for pretty much any vegetables.


This recipe makes a whole lot of extra vinaigrette - it should keep for a few weeks, but if you don't think you'll use it on other stuff, make half.

Lentil-Couscous Salad with Mustard Vinaigrette
Adapted from delish.com

1 1/4 cup vegetable broth or water
1 cup whole-wheat couscous
2 1/2 cups water
1 cup green or brown lentils, rinsed
1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1/2 cup lemon juice
1/2 cup red-wine or balsamic vinegar
1/4 cup Dijon mustard
2 tbs honey
4 cloves garlic, minced
salt and pepper to taste

Bring the vegetable broth to a boil. Add the couscous, cover, and remove from heat. Let it stand until all the water is absorbed, then fluff with a fork.

Add the lentils and water to another pot. Bring to a boil and simmer, covered, about 20 minutes or until tender.

While the lentils are cooking, make the vinaigrette. Combine the oil, lemon juice, vinegar, mustard, and garlic. Season with salt and pepper and adjust the other ingredients to taste.

Drain the lentils and mix them with the couscous. Toss them with 1/4 cup of the vinaigrette (more or less to taste, but don't over-season them - they're the most tasty when you can taste the vinaigrette but the nutty flavor of the grains comes through as well).

Possible serving preparation 1: toss greens of your choice (arugula would be nice) with another 1/4 cup of the vinaigrette. Pour the lentil-couscous over them, then top with diced tomatoes, cucumbers, feta, and another few spoonfuls of the dressing.

Possible serving preparation 2: reheat the lentil-couscous with some spinach until it wilts. Serve over rice with extra vinaigrette. Adding some sunflower seed here would be nice too.

Possible serving preparation 3: use the salad as a bed for steamed veggies with a little more dressing poured over them.

Possible serving preparation 4: eat warm, straight from the pot, with a big spoon.

Curried Deviled Eggs

Gabe and I started experimenting with deviled eggs this summer and now have formed a veritable addiction. We made them this week to use up our leftover mayonaise from the Green Goddess dressing, and are now already planning when to make our next batch. We make them with the usual mayo, mustard, and horseradish, along with grated mild onion, a touch of honey, and most importantly, a big dose of curry powder. Believe me, once you have tried deviled eggs with curry powder, all others will taste bland. the amount is of course adjustable - Gabe likes em to taste of nothing but very spicy curry, but I like a more balanced mingling between traditional devilish tastes and curry.




All ingredient amounts below are rough guesses on the lighter-flavored side of things and should be adjusted to taste.

Curried Devilled Eggs

6 eggs
1/4 - 1/2 cup mayonaise
3 tbs strong mustard
2 tbs horseradish
1 tbs honey
3 tbs grated onion (sweet, mild varieties are best - if you're using a spicy variety, you should start with 1 tbs and build up)
2 tbs minced scallions (optional - give it a fresh, garlicky flavor)
1 tbs curry powder
1/2 tsp cayenne (optional, for those who enjoy a scorched palate)
salt and pepper to taste
paprika

Everyone has their own method for cooking hard-boiled eggs, but the way I've learned is to put them in a pot of cold water (covered by about an inch), bring them to boil on high, reduce the heat and let them cook for a minute, and then take them off the heat, cover, and let them sit for 10 - 15 minutes. After 10 minutes you can test one egg - soft-boiled isn't a disaster, but hard-boiled will hold up to filling better without coming apart. When the eggs are done, drop them into a big bowl of icewater - this cools them enough to peel and helps the shells come off easily. reach in and crack them on the sides, then peel them and slice them in half. scoop out the yolks and mash them in a bowl with all of the other ingredients. Adjust everything to taste. If you prefer a lighter filling, add more mayo and beat the filling to make it fluffy. Spoon the filling into a plastic bag and cut off a tiny bit of one of the corners to make a whole. Squeeze the filling equally between all of the eggs. Sprinke with paprika. Chill and enjoy!

Green Goddess Dressing

In an effort to use up some of the old (yet delicious) greens in our fridge as well as the mint and basil plants (which need pretty much constant trimming), tonight we made some fabulous green goddess dressing on a salad of butter lettuce, arugula, cucumbers, and some delicious plum tomatoes from the farmer's market that Kober was kind enough to share. Even if it is just a small portion of what we eat, getting produce from the market right on our street and growing our own herbs makes me feel so much more connected to our food... I absolutely cannot wait to have yard space to grow veggies and all sorts of herbs.

Urban the Dinosaur is an enthusiastic herbivore.

This dressing tastes very tangy, garlicky, green and fresh. To make it, we made a small batch of our own mayonaise, a remarkable process in which you somehow get two little egg yolks to hold a whole two cups of oil. It tastes pretty similar to the store-bought kind, but without the weird chemical edge, and with a little olive flavor since we used 1/4 olive oil. Next time we make it I will post that recipe with detailed pictures.

Green Goddess Dressing
Makes enough to dress about 6 big salads

1/2 cup mayonaise
1/2 cup shredded scallions (use the whole thing except any wilted or slimy parts)
1 clove garlic
Juice of 1 lemon
1/2 cup fresh herbs of your choice - we used basil and mint
1/2 cup sour cream
salt and pepper to taste

Blenderize or food process together everything except the sour cream. Then stir in the sour cream and season to taste.

Use to dress green salads of any sort - would also probably be delicious over boiled potatoes, eggs, or green beans.

Monster Zucchini Part 5: Zucchini-Basil Risotto

Oh man, after making this I totally regretted that I had never tried to make risotto before. It's supposed to be one of those labor-intensive, easy-to-fuck-up recipes that is best left to the pros... but somehow making ours was really easy and pretty fast. maybe it was because all the shredded zucchini naturally gave it a nice mushy texture, so we didn't have to worry so much about slow-cooking the rice to get it creamy. anyway, this recipe was awesome. the flavor is surprisingly complex, with sweetness from the zuccs, nuttiness from the rice, garlic and onion, spicy basil, and just a light overtone of parmesan (far from commercial risottos that often taste like pure parmesan mush).

Zucchini-Basil Risotto
adapted from andreasrecipes.com; serves 6 - 8

6 cups vegetable broth (1 or 2 cups can be water)
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/2 medium yellow onion, finely diced
2 medium zucchini, grated
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 cups Arborio rice
8 fresh basil leave, chiffonade
salt and pepper to taste
2 tbs butter
1/4 - 1/2 cup parmesan cheese

Start by heating up all of your vegetable broth until almost boiling - keep it hot but don't let it boil. Heat your oil on medium, then saute the onion until it softens. Add the garlic and sautee another minute or two (don't let it brown at all). Add the rice and saute another 3 or 4 minutes, stirring, until the rice turns translucent and starts to smell nutty. Add the zucchini and stir 1 - 2 more minutes to evaporate some of the liquid. Now add about a cup of the vegie broth, stir, and let the rice cook, uncovered, until the broth is "absorbed" - that term confused me in the recipes because I didn't know how dry the rice should be, but it worked for me to cook it until the rice was about as moist as I would want my risotto to be. Once it's absorbed, add another cup of broth and repeat. Keep doing this until the rice is fully cooked - there should still be individual grains with some chew of their own, but no crunch. You probably won't end up using all of the broth. Turn down the heat on the rice and stir in the basil, salt, pepper, butter, and parmesan. Enjoy!

Monster Zucchini Part 4: Chocolate Chip Zucchini Bread

This bread turned out great! Definitely the best zucchini bread that I've made. Compared to the last one we posted, which was pretty much just a wet, buttery sponge, this was moist while retaining some chew an a nice bready texture. Also, to my surprise, I liked that this recipe used only cinnamon as opposed to an array of baking spices, and of course adding chocolate is never a bad thing. In the future I'd like to add walnuts as well, but enough of my friends here are anti-walnut that I thought it was best to leave them out this time.


Chocolate-Chip Zucchini Bread
Makes 2 loaves

3 cups flour - up to 2 can be whole wheat, which adds texture
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp baking powder
1 tbs cinnamon, ground
3 large eggs
1 3/4 cups sugar
3/4 cup canola oil
1 tbs pure vanilla extract
2 1/2 cups zucchini, grated
1 1/4 cups chocolate chips
1 cup chopped walnuts (optional)

Preheat to 350 and grease two loaf pans. Combine all of the dry ingredients. Cream together the eggs and sugar, then add the oil and vanilla. Fold this into the dry ingredients, followed by the zucchini and chocolate chips (if your zucchini is dripping wet, squeeze out a little of the water before you add it, but don't make it entirely dry as it keeps the bread moist). Pour into the pans and bake for about an hour, until well browned.

Insalata Caprese

This is pretty much the best food ever. If you're rich enough to buy fresh mozzerella and basil, I would recommend eating this every day of the summer, while there are still delicious tomatoes around. Luckily, we have been growing our own basil and mint illegally on the roof top of a Chinese restaurant behind our apartment, so Insalata Caprese is that much more affordable. We had to drive like an hour away to get our lovely little plants, but it was definitely worth it (and we got to check out back-roads Iowa, which was cool). Now that we've figured out their watering/picking schedule they are doing quite well, and supplying us constantly with delicious fresh herbs. The only problem is that Gabe is the only one tall enough to climb in and out of the window to take care of them, and he is very nervous about the mean-looking guys across the alley who watch him. Insalata Caprese
2 ripe perfect tomatoes
1 sphere of fresh mozzerella
10 large fresh basil leaves
olive oil salt
and pepper

Slice up your tomatoes and mozzerella and stack them with a basil leaf or two on top. drizzle with olive oil and top with salt and pepper. Also nice served over greens tossed with oil and vinegar.

5-Minutes-A-Day Bread

We finally remembered to take pictures while making this bread while simultaniously making it correctly! This recipe is awesome and should be a staple for any one who is a fan of bread and wants to feed themselves for cheap. It's name is perhaps deceptive - you can't actually have bread in just 5 minutes, but after the original mixing and rising you keep the dough in the fridge, and it only takes 5 minutes of actually handling total each day to form the loaves and then stick them in the oven once it's heated up. It is very comforting to know the dough is waiting for you on days when you have no good ideas for dinner.

5-Minutes-A-Day Bread
makes enough dough for about 5 small loaves

3 cups lukewarm water
1 1/2 tbs yeast
1 1/2 tbs salt
6 1/2 cups flour - white unbleached, or bre

Stir the salt and yeast into the water in a large bowl. Add the flour about 1 cup at a time, mixing it in with you hands, a wooden spoon, or a food processor with a paddle attachment. Once it is homogenous, stop stirring - do not knead the dough. Loosely cover the dough and allow it to rise for about 2 hours, or until it starts to collapse - longer is ok, but less time is not. Stick the dough in the fridge (you can cover more tightly at this point). After 3 hours, you're ready to make your first loaf. The dough can be kept in the fridge for up to two weeks - the longer it sits, the more of a complex, sour-dough-ish taste it will get.

When you're ready to make your loaf, flour your hands and a wood/plastic surface very well. Reach into your dough bowl, grab an approximately grapefruit-sized hunk (mine often end up closer to orange-sized because I have little hands) and cut it away from the rest of the dough with a serrated knife. Put this hunk of dough down on the floured surface and flour your hands and the dough - the next step will be painful if everything isn't absolutely covered in flour to prevent sticking. During this step, the idea is to stretch the surface of the dough and make it into a nice, round shape. To do this, hold the hunk of dough in your hands and use your thumbs to gently pull two opposite sides of the dough away from each other and then fold them down under the bottom of the dough. Turn the dough slightly and repeat this several times - you want to end up with a smooth, rounded top surface and a bottom that is made up of a bunch of tucks. If you can't get it right, try searching for "5 minutes a day bread" on google video and watch a pro do it.

After that, just let your dough sit, uncovered ,for about 40 minutes. Meanwhile, stick a baking stone (or a baking sheet if you don't have one) in the oven and crank it up to 450, at least 20 minutes before you're reading to bake. Put a metal baking dish on a lower rack in the oven. Cut a 1/4" deep slice into the top of the bread, or in a fancy pattern, before baking. Use a spatula or whatever you've got to slide your dough onto the stone/sheet and then immediately pour a glass of water into the lower baking dish and then shut the oven door right away - this traps in steam, which will help develop the bread's crust. Bake it for about 30 minutes, or until it's nice and browned. Let it cool a bit before serving, or it will be all soft and gushy and tongue-burny on the inside.

Monster Zucchini Part 3: Curried Zucchini-Carrot Fritters

A nice simple dinner to use up the zucchini. These fritters ended up crispier and crunchier than the last ones we made, which I think is due to much more time spent draining the moister from the zuccs, as well as adding corn meal to the dough. These were very tasty - nice and spicy, garlicky, and sweet from the zucchini. We served them with a sauce made from the zucchini/onion/carrot juices and raita over basmati rice from our big awesome Indian-market bag:
Curried Zucchini-Carrot Fritters
Adapted from tracyeatssf.blogspot.com; serves 4

2 cups shredded zucchini
2 cups shredded carrot
1 small onion, shredded
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1/2 small green chili, minced
2 eggs, beaten
½ cup milk
½ cup flour
¼ cup of cornmeal
salt and pepper to taste
Curry powder to taste
Raita (see below)

Combine all of the vegetables in a colander over a pot. Salt the veggies and press/squeeze the water out - get as much out as possible. Reduce the juices with some curry powder to make a sauce, or save them to use as veggie broth. Add the eggs, milk, flour, cornmeal, salt, pepper, and curry. heat about a 1/4" of oil in a wide pan on medium-high. Drop scoops of the dough into it, flatten with a spatula, and cook until well browned on each side. Serve over rice with raita.

Raita: combine equal parts plain yogurt and finely-chopped cucumbers - optionally add shredded mint, dill, or coriander.

Monster Zucchini Part 2: Cupcakes

The first thing we did with our zucchini shreds was make cupcakes. Yes, I was skeptical too. Could a zucchini cupcake really be any different from a muffin? Wouldn't the thick and gooey texture of cooked zucchini completely negate the light and fluffy texture typical of the cupcake?

The answer is kind of. These ended up not quite as heavy and moist as zucchini cakes and muffins, but still more dense and moist than most cupcakes. The texture is very appealing, especially after being refrigerated over night. My only complaint is that the cupcake part isn't as flavorful as would be ideal... however this is pretty much compensated for by the best frosting in the world, i.e. creamcheese frosting, here highly orange-flavored.

Zucchini-Spice Cupcakes
Stolen from realmomkitchen.blogspot.com; makes 24 cupcakes

3 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
1 teaspoon ground cloves
1 cup vegetable oil
2 large eggs, room temperature
1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
¾ teaspoon finely grated lemon zest
2 cups packed light-brown sugar
3 cups packed grated zucchini (recipe does say whether to drain it, so we squeezed it a little as we picked it up but didn't bother to get out all of the moisture)

Preheat you oven to 350 and line or grease your muffin pans. Whisk together the dry ingredients in one bowl and the wet ingredients (oil, eggs, vanilla, and zest) in another. Add the sugar into the wet, followed by the zucchini. Fold together the wet and dry and pour it into the pans, filling each almost to the top. Bake about 20 minutes, cool, and then frost. keep in the refrigerator.

Cream Cheese Frosting

1 (8 oz) package cream cheese
1/2 - 1 cup sugar to taste (most recipes use powdered, but I think it tastes chemical-y, and granulated works fine)
1 tsp vanilla
zest of one orange
2 tbs orange juice

Beat everything together until creamy and light. Refrigerate until ready to use.

Monster Zucchini Part 1: Purchase and Processing

The Grinnell saturday morning farmer's market is a beautiful thing. We purchased the loot on the left for five dollars and from it we have made a ton of salsa and fried Indian-style eggplant already. Now we are tackling the hard-to-justify but irresistible purchase of one fucking enormous zucchini. maybe from that picture you cannot tell just how large this zucchini is. maybe you think the eggplants and peppers are larger than they are. maybe you think it is merely a somewhat unusually large zucchini. You are incorrect. Observe:







This is one enormous zucchini. You know how sometimes you feel uncomfortable carrying around large zucchinis because of their phallic nature? This zucchini has approached and left behind the phallic stage. this zucchini cannot be held in just one hand even by the strong. this zucchini is a weapon.

when we bought this zucchini, we thought we could use it to make a full batch of cupcakes. After shredding it in our new (!!!) super awesome powerful amazing food processor, we learned that we have enough zucchini on our hands to make five batches of cupcakes. What you see on the right is about 1/4 of the total zucchini output. That is a nine-cup capacity food processor (!!!).



The absurdity of a zucchini such as this inspires the creative mind.

And also requires a lot of zucchini-based recipes. Be prepared.

Mixed Vegetable Curry

This would be our second backlog post - we made this maybe a week ago. This is the basic North Indian curry recipe we use when we are too lazy to look up something that has a specific flavor to it. It is very very tasty, and it can be adjusted to taste by adding more or less of any of the spices, more or less heat, more or less tomato, cream vs. coconut milk, thickening it more or less, and using any vegetable combinations you desire. In the picture below, for example, there are tons of blackened mustard seeds visible because Kober and Gabe went a little overboard - Gabe really liked it this way, but it was a bit overpowering for my taste.

My personal favorite variation, and the basic one here, is a wide range of green and not green vegetables, a medium amount of mustard and cumin, medium heat, lots of coconut milk and cashews, and very thick.


Mixed Vegetable Curry

all vegetable and spice amounts should be adjusted based on availability and taste.

1/4 cup vegetable oil or ghee
1/2 tsp mustard seeds
1/2 tsp cumin seeds
1 cup chopped onion
2 cloves garlic, minced
1" piece ginger, minced
1/2 small hot green chili, minced, + more to taste
3 tbs ground cashews (optional)
1 cup chopped broccoli
1 cup chopped cauliflower
1 cup chopped potatoes
1 cup chopped sweet potatoes
1/2 cup trimmed green beans
2 cups vegetable broth (1 small can)
1 14-oz can fine-chopped or pureed tomatoes
2 tbs curry powder
1 tbs paprika
1 cup coconut milk, + more to taste
salt and pepper to taste

heat the oil or ghee on medium-high in a large wok or wide-bottomed pot (you might need two). Test the oil by throwing a mustard seed into it - if it pops, the oil is ready. Toss in all of the cumin seeds followed by all of the mustard seeds - be prepared, they will pop all over the place and be dangerously hot projectiles, but you have to muster up the courage to reach over the pot anyway and dump in the onion, about 30 seconds after they're all poppin'. Turn down the heat a little maybe and cook the onions until they start to get translucent. Add the garlic, ginger, chili, and optional cashews. Cook briefly to soften everything up (don't let anything get brown) and then add all of the vegetables. Toss them around in the oil to coat, and cook them for a few minutes, stirring. Now add the vegetable broth, canned tomatoes, curry, and paprika. Cover the veggies and simmer them until soft - stir once and a while, especially if they aren't completely submerged in liquid. Add the coconut milk and salt and pepper to taste.

At this point your curry will likely be very watery, which is fine but non-traditional. To get it nice and thick, strain out the vegetables and transfer them to a bowl. Turn up the heat and boil the sauce, scraping the sides and bottom frequently, to reduce by half. You can adjust the seasoning while you do this, adding more salt and pepper and more chili or ginger. When it's as thick as you want it, pour it over the veggies and serve!

Chai and apologies

Ok so it has maybe been quite a while since we have posted anything. Getting to Iowa was hectic and then setting up the apartment was hectic and then started classes was hectic... but now we are settling down, cooking more, and taking the time to photograph it before hastily consuming it more, and the blog shall be revived (at least until midterms). So I'm just going to post a few backlog items at the same time, and then we'll get back on schedule.

This past weekend was especially insane because we ran Falafel Oasis, which for those of you who do not know (perhaps 1 out of our 2 readers) is a falafel stand that I ran last year at Grinnell to raise money for a microfinance group that I belong to. This involves a huge amount of shopping, cooking (4 hours of balling chickpea dough did give us an excuse to spend the whole day watching Buffy however), and then four hours at night on your feet deep-frying and selling, and then of course a days worth of cleaning chickpea goop out of the crevices of the kitchen (even more vital because our roommate Kober is allergic). Anyway, one of the products we sell, and the most soothing to make, is Chai. Making it involves simply boiling ginger, spices and water, briefly soaking tea bags, and then adding milk and sugar, resulting in a beverage that is not even in the same family as the bland pre-packaged dry mixes and "concentrates."

Chai

1 large pot water
10 cardamom pods
1 cinnamon stick
1/2 tsp fennel
10 peppercorns
1" piece ginger, cut into slices
2 plain black tea bags (Darjeeling, English Breakfast, etc.)
4 cups whole milk
1/2 cup brown sugar, + more to taste

Bring the water, spices, and ginger to boil, then reduce to simmer. Cook for about 20 minutes, or until very spicy - you want it to be overly strong because the milk will dilute it. Adjust the levels of different spices as you go. Add the milk and the sugar and adjust each to taste. Strain out the spices out just before serving - if you're going to store it, keep the spices in it to deepen the flavor. Serve hot or iced.